Travis County Commissioners Court
February 21, 2006
Item 5
5 is to consider and take appropriate action regarding the asian gypsy moth in Travis County. This was put on just in case we need it. Morning.
>> morning, john kuhl, vierpt al officer, tnr. I know they had a very successful meeting this past Saturday at the pinnacle in oak hill and over 70 interested residents there, and they had the tables manned by usda and Texas parks and wildlife professionals. The way we left it last week is if they needed our staff, we were there to help them, but they got by without us. What I will do is get an e-mail update to you guys later this week on how the permission granting situation is going for the spray. That's about all I’ve got.
>> do we need this back on another week just in case?
>> I suppose it wouldn't hurt. It's good to keep the public information going out there.
>> john, let me ask you this. I did see I think at least one lengthy response -- I don't know whether it was e-mail or whether it was a letter, talking about having some real reservations about the pesticide that would be used. Do you know whether or not this Saturday meeting had much conversation about that? I mean, was that just an isolated one person's opinion with regards to how detrimental it might be for doing this kind of spraying?
>> I hate to say, I did not see that. Was that a letter to the editor or something?
>> no, I think I have it in my office. I’ll get you a copy of it.
>> one of the things that we did right off the bat is our natural resources staff needs to do is be concerned, of course, about these efforts, and so we went into the research, independent research background that we could find, and one of the things that obviously we care a lot about and manage, spent a lot of dollars on is managing for endangered song birds. Obviously caterpillars are a prime food item. And those are the types of things that we looked into. And to date I have not found anything that concerns me, so it is obvious that the food base, prey base for certain song birds will be decreased because of the effect, but it is just something that other studies have shown they're able to adjust to. So that's -- so far -- we've looked at it pretty closely. We feel okay about it, but I will look more into the specific e-mail you're talking about and include that in my e-mail to you guys later this week.
>> if you want to just contact barbara in my office and get me a copy of the thing.
>> thank you very much. We'll have it back on.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, February 22, 2006 10:26 AM